-The characters has no voice when they were defeated or in the dying sequence, but they move their mouth while you read the quote, this game could had been much better if Koei wanted. Other titles only even not had the moving mouth routine.

-I remember a Youtube video, the DW2 Hu Lao Gate intro video, one guy said: "Xiahou Dun with BOTH eyes lol". Of course that Xiahou Dun had both eyes there, Cao Xing and his arrow had not been shot yet. Is here when you can see Xiahou Dun losing his eye (you must be him), with no Xia Pi battle available in DW2.

-Many people complained about this game for not being "historic" when we talk about character lifespan. "Hey, Zhou Yu was not present in Hu Lao Gate" "DIan Wei was not in Guan Du and sucesive battles". Of course that they weren´t there, but i personally prefer it this way. Every character plays the same number of battles. DW2 has 5 battles for each character (except Other) in Musou Mode. It is logic that every character be present in all his kingdom battles.

-This title has the best Yellow Turbans stage ever made (being 2nd that of DW3), a gigantic map with the main 3 forces (4 if we count He Jin, you will be under his forces if you use Other character) starting from 3 different places. This stage is divided in 2 phases:1 - That in which you defeat the defending officer and you open your path in the plains all surrounded by turban troops...2 - That in which you face the Zhang brothers and their traps, just the most awesome part, with Zhang Bao summoning winds and shooting a rain of arrows against us, and Zhang Liang with his falling rock attack. This last specially dangerous because one officer/unit died in only two hits from a rock.

-The first time I played Yellow Turbans and DW, the inmersion effect was fantastic. The game gave me the feeling i was really there, surrounded by enemies, it was like a deep 3D effect that i dont feel now with more recent DWs. There you looked everywhere and there was always enemies stepping towards you, in contrast with DW4 in which you see troops suddenly appearing at your back when you turn around. In DW2 there was not popping effect, every red point above you in the map showed an enemy soldier at your side, without magic tricks, they make their way to your position from their Gate Captain entrance, as it must be.

-Morale system: Again it is DW2 the title with the best morale system. Nothing of tricks, you kill one enemy officer, you get one more morale star for you or your unit boss. In other DW there are too much "unavoidable" events that symply & directly empties almost your entire morale bar, making almost impossible to end the stage in a reasonable way (with your allied officers alive). Here your officers helped you quite a lot. Almost can remember those first games, playing Yellow Turbans with Zhou Yu, and seeing Cheng Pu and Han Dang fighting really serious at my side. Even being a 1-player game, you felt somehow "accompanied and backed up" by your force. If you look well when you are killing troops, you will see not only the number of morale stars the enemy unit boss has, here you can also see a yellow bar that shows you the exact amount of morale he must win or lose to increase or decrease one morale star. That is only exclusive of DW2.

AxeLordGerardo wrote:-The first time I played Yellow Turbans and DW, the inmersion effect was fantastic. The game gave me the feeling i was really there, surrounded by enemies, it was like a deep 3D effect that i dont feel now with more recent DWs. There you looked everywhere and there was always enemies stepping towards you, in contrast with DW4 in which you see troops suddenly appearing at your back when you turn around. In DW2 there was not popping effect, every red point above you in the map showed an enemy soldier at your side, without magic tricks, they make their way to your position from their Gate Captain entrance, as it must be.

I'd forgotten about that feeling that you were actually on a battlefield and that everywhere you looked there were men. Without a doubt that made the atmosphere on 2 better than many of the later games.

DW2...their stories,their legends are about to begin...DW2 was also my first experience of dynasty warriors series and I do like the game more than DW3 or DW4, not to mention the 6th title that is a grand failure. I wouldn't choose it over DW5 or DW7 though.Few things that I really like about DW2:

1. Narration. The narration with oppression soundtrack in a background sounded really epic. 2. Morale system. DW2 and DW3 are the only titles that encourage you to fight alongside allies and not worry about babysitting them after.3. Allies KO count. I always liked to compare my KO count to that of my allies after the battle. That feature was removed in consequent games.4. Combos. DW2 incourages 8+hit combos by 100% guaranteed reward of an item (meatbun, arrows or double attack/defence)after depending on the rank of the enemy defeated. The combo incouragement is still present in the 4th and 3rd titles although the minimum amount of hits is raised.5. Friendly fire. It took me a while to figure out that my scattering attacks really hurt my allies.

A special note regarding YTR map. Quite few players considers this to be one of the best maps out of all DW games. I was surprised and happy to see it in DW7E although it wasn't the same without the Yellow Storm as a bgm.

There's no trick to it. I'm not using an orbment, it's not magic...and I'm not using an artifact, either. I just will fire to appear, and it does.McBurn

Even without voice quotes in battle, you saw personal quotes, when by example Xiahou Dun had 50 KOs and you saw in the screen how Xiahou Yuan praised him: "Brother Dun!, just as I expected", instead of the generic: "Xiahou Dun, just as I expected!"

Same for Liu Bei and his brothers, like Guan Yu praising Liu Bei: "Brother!, just as I expected"

If some officer praise you, his quote will change depending on your rank in the army, by example:

If you play in Yellow Turbans and you are Sun Jian, and your commander (He Jin or Zhang Jiao) praises you, he will say your name plainly: "Sun Jian!, just as i expected". The same when you praise a non selectable officer or an inferior in your army, by example, Sun Jian praising any of his officers: Cheng Pu / Huang Gai / Han Dang, etc.

The word "Lord" will be added when an officer praises another of equal rank or superior, or your overall commander, by example Xiahou Dun to Guan Yu: "Lord Guan Yu! Just as I expected" / "Lord Yuan Shao!" just as I expected"But remember only selectable characters will usually praise another officer.

If you play as Zhang Jiao in Yellow Turbans force, nobody will praise you when you get 50 KOs , because there are not any selectable officers in your force apart from him, OK? You can check this at Guan Du. Only Liu Bei and Zhang Fei, the only selectable officers in Yuan Shao´s Forces, will praise you the 50 KOs.

Resuming, you are praised as "Lord" to any other selectable officer, but not from your commander, he will only say your name, and you will always call your commander "Lord His Name". Liu Bei and his brothers and Xiahou Yuan has personal praise quotes.

Constant troop support (DW2 & 3): No matter in what place of the map you may be, there will always a bunch of troops of your unit coming to aid you even in enemy territory, if the boss of your unit is still alive, of course.

Gate Captain as an Allied Officer: DW2 is the only title in what ive seen a Gate Captain leave his fixed spot in the game to fight his way until the enemy commander like any of your allied officers, i don´t know if this is a minor bug, but anyway it is quite funny to see the gate captains all messed in the battle.

Historic events: Remember DW2 only had the main battles and officers, so dont blame the game seeing fictional situations, like to see Cao Cao and Liu Bei leading their armies at Wu Zhang Plains. The saga was just starting and introducing itself.

-You can see the Xiahou Dun´s eye incident at Hu Lao Gate if you play as him there.

-Zhang Liao fights in Dong Zhuo´s Forces at Hu Lao Gate. If you select Zhang Liao as a Cao officer in Allied Forces, then Zhang Liao in Dong Zhuo´s Forces will be changed for another officer called Zhang Ji. Nice detail.

-The first 3-side Guan Du: Even being a battle between Yuan Shao and Cao Cao, Liu Bei´s forces have their own identity here.Play as Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, or Guan Yu in Cao Cao´s side, they will maintain their green colour and aura when doing the Musou attack. Not in vain, in the pre-battle screen, their names are inside a green square. They remain loyal to their thoughts of not to serve anyone for long .

-Beat´em up aspect: DW2 was completely different from the ones we see now. Back then, DW2 was almost like any other 3D beat´em up, but with many more features than any other. (I must continue in another new post)

Last edited by AxeLordGerardo on Thu Aug 08, 2013 9:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

At difference with other genre titles, nobody ever dared to put such large number of selectable characters. Yes, you started with only 9, but you surprise increased at the same rate you unlocked new ones, till you reach all the 28.

Koei did an awesome work making this jewel. yet today its HD graphics continue being more than decent, the best of the best among the early PS2 titles too when we talk about graphic quality.No game offered as much as this in its day. Umbeatable simple and great gameplay, the chance to mount a horse, the chance to use bow & arrows, large battle maps entirely to explore, charismatic characters to choose from, 8 different stages with the chance of playing in the other side of the battle, editable intro, bodyguard training fuction, chance to increase your attack, defense and life levels... all this in a simple PS2 CD!

Note: DW2 had several "clone" characters with the same moveset: Zhang Jiao, Sima Yi, Dong Zhuo and Yuan Shao in one side, Gan Ning, Xiahou Yuan and Huang Zhong in other side and Zhang Liao and Lu Meng in a third one... but not at all!Each character has his own attack, defense... and bow attack stats. This way we can see Huang Zhong, the bow master, has great bow attack since the begginning. But if we use Gan Ning, that use the same moveset of Huang Zhong, we will see his bow attack is not as powerful. The conclusion is there are not 2 equal characters.

AxeLordGerardo wrote:If your first title you played were DW2 you could understand me perfectly.

Let me tell you my viewpoint and the features and events that i like most and ive seen in my 11 years playing it:

-The game had an impressive variety of characters. I remember the box only told you there was 9 to choose from. In that time no title had that number of characters, much less 28, the total after unblocking then all.

-The game had (has yet) high resolution graphics for the year 2000 in character design and scenarios, making it awesome the first time you played it. The interior of castles and fortresses were specially detailed and solid.

(To be continued, the scroll fails after write too much in one only post)

DW2 was my first game for the PS2 I played it with my friend for a month or two faithfully unlocking each character and when we were done on normal we did it all over again on hard, that game got us interested in the 3k era and we discovered this forum and others like-minded.

Frankly I doubt I'll ever play another game as ground-breaking as DW2 was some come close, as do other DW games but really that game got a lot of people into 3k and koei is a genius.

That which does not grow falls into decay. Dynasty Warriors may have been impressive in the past, but it has become a largely stagnant series. Koei could make something grandiose again if they tried. True greatness, however, would require them to think outside the box and create something new. There were some ways in which games like Kessen 2 and Dynasty Warriors 2 were groundbreaking at the time of their release (graphically or otherwise). Can Koei make something groundbreaking again? I feel that they need to up their game.

This is somewhat irrelevant, but I found myself extremely impressed by the trailer for this game. I have no idea if the game itself will end up good or not, but the idea is fantastic. Essentially, the game attempts to be a Three Kingdoms MOBA with a 5v5v5 mode (presumably involving each of the three kingdoms duking it out).

This is the kind of innovation I would like to see from Koei: something new or a different take on something old. I want to be "wowed" again. I actually think Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce was a neat idea. It seems like Koei is interested in making "Monster Hunter" games in general. That's a good plan because those seem to have become quite popular. Any kind of branching out into new genres is a good idea for Koei, I feel. Personally, I think the best scenario would be to see them come up with some clever new simulation games again. I think simulation games are where Koei shines.